Leonard Peltier Hearing Brings Hope for Freedom

[5 articles]

Leonard Peltier Hearing Brings Hope for Freedom

http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/leonard-peltier-hearing-brings-hope-for.html

Leonard Peltier could leave prison by August 18

By Harvey Wasserman
July 30, 2009

For a formidable and growing global community of supporters, the
prospect of Native American activist Leonard Peltier finally leaving
prison inspires a longing that cuts to the depths of the soul.

So Peltier's first parole hearing of the Obama Era -- on Tuesday,
July 28 -- inspired hope of an intensity that will have a major
impact on the new presidency. A decision must come from the Federal
Parole Commission within three weeks. His attorney is calling for a
surge of public support that would create an irresistible political
climate for Leonard's release.

The relationship between Peltier and those who have followed his case
over the decades can be intensely personal. His imprisonment has come
to stand not only for five centuries of unjust violence waged against
Native Americans, but also for the inhumane theft of the life of a
man who has handled his 33 years in jail with epic dignity,
effectiveness and grace.

Peltier's latest parole hearing convened at the federal penitentiary
in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where he is currently held. According to
Eric Seitz, Peltier's Honolulu-based attorney, Peltier spoke for more
than an hour "with great eloquence" about the nature of his case, his
imprisonment and his plans for freedom. "The hearing officer seemed
to listen carefully," said Seitz. "We thought it went very well."

The decision on Peltier's parole will be made by the four sitting
members of the Federal Parole Commission whose offices are in Chevy
Chase, Maryland.

Commissioners Isaac Fulwood, Jr., Cranston Mitchell, Edward Reilly
and Patricia Cushware are all Bush appointees. One seat is vacant;
Fulwood was elevated to the Chairman's seat in May by President Obama.

According to Seitz, the hearing was taped by an officer charged with
reporting to the Commissioners within 48 hours. The Commissioners are
required to render a decision within 21 days -- by August 18. Should
they rule in his favor, Peltier could walk out of prison very soon
after the decision is issued.

Should the Commssioners turn down his parole application, Seitz says
the appeal would go to the federal district court in Harrisburg. The
report of the hearing would become available to Peltier and the public.

Seitz said he spoke to the record for about 20 minutes on the
legalities of the case. He said Peter Matthiessen, author of In the
Spirit of Crazy Horse, explained the history of the 1970s incidents
that led to Peltier being accused of murdering two FBI agents. Crazy
Horse is the definitive account of the origins of the case and of the
climate of violence and repression imposed on the native community at
the time of the killings. Seitz said Matthiessen emphasized "the many
reasons to have misgivings about whether the system performed well
and fairly in Leonard's case."

Mattheissen was joined by Dr.Thomas Fassett of the United Methodist
Church, who testified, said Seitz, "to the negative impact of
Peltier's 33-year imprisonment on the world's view of how the U.S.
government treats its native population. Leonard's case is viewed in
the larger community both nationally & internationally as a major
embarrassment…as a gross injustice…a black mark."

The testimony was accompanied by thousands of letters, with signees
including South African Bishop Desmond Tutu, US Senator Daniel Inouye
(D-HI), and actor Robert Redford, whose film Incident at Ogalala is
the definitive documentary.

Cynthia Maleterre of the Turtle Island Clan then outlined how Peltier
could meet the requirements of parole in his home community in North
Dakota. Restored to his Chippewa-Dakota homeland, Maleterre explained
that Peltier would have housing, a job and be surrounded by family,
including great-grandchildren he has never seen.

Seitz said testimony opposing parole came from a representative of
the FBI, sent by Director Robert Mueller, a holdover Bush appointee,
and from the former director of the Minnesota Bureau. Two sons of
Jack Coler, one of the FBI agents killed in the Ogalala shoot-out,
also argued against Peltier being freed, as did a former agent named Ed Woods.

Seitz said that all those opposing parole argued Peltier should spend
the rest of his days in prison, and did not deserve a new trial.

But Seitz was "guardedly optimistic" about a favorable decision from
the Parole Commission. He said that a "good rapport" had been
established with the hearing officer, and that the new chair of the
commission is generally held "in high esteem."

President Barack Obama does have the power to grant clemency, but
Seitz said prisoners apply only when all other avenues have been
exhausted. Usually, says Seitz, "presidential pardons do not come
until the Chief Executive is leaving office."

Seitz says letters to the Parole Commission and to local newspapers,
calls to Congressional Representatives (202-224-3121), talk show
hosts and other forms of public pressure are now of the utmost
importance. The hope, he says, lies in creating a "public environment
favorable to release."

As Leonard Peltier approaches his 65th year -- having spent half his
life in prison -- every day is now critical to lifting this burden
from our collective souls.
--

For more information go to www.leonardpeltier.net.

-------

Peltier II

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/coyote/detail?entry_id=44179

By: Peter Coyote
July 23 2009

In the hopes that another's point of view might be useful in opening
up some hardened mental arteries, about Leonard Peltier, I'm posting
in full this letter by Kurt Vonnegut, William and Rose Styron and
Peter Mathiessen which was printed in the New York Review of
Books.Perhaps these leading authors and intellectuals will offer a
standing to readers that I lack. Again, I reiterate, that not being
there I cannot say with certainty that Leonard is innocent. I can
say, that no American deserves a trial like this, and the same holds
true for Mumia Abu Jamal, so those readers that linked the two
together were not far off the mark.

The New York Review of Books

Volume 47, Number 12 · July 20, 2000 United States v. Leonard
Peltier By E.L. Doctorow, Peter Matthiessen, William Styron, Rose
Styron, Kurt Vonnegut To the Editors: On Monday, June 12, in a
hearing before the parole officer at Leavenworth Prison, attorneys
Ramsey Clark, Carl Nadler, and Jennifer Harbury filed a request for
parole for the Native American leader Leonard Peltier, whose
immediate release from prison is strongly supported by Amnesty
International (which recognizes Peltier as a political prisoner), by
the Kennedy Memorial Center on Human Rights, and by 250 Indian tribes
represented by the National Congress of American Indians. The request
is also supported by the Assembly of First Nations tribes of Canada;
by Nobel laureates Desmond Tutu and Rigoberta Menchú, by Nelson
Mandela and his Holiness the Dalai Lama, and by many other
responsible political and religious leaders, including one of
Peltier's own judges on the Federal Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

Leonard Peltier has already served twenty-three hard years behind
bars for the alleged murder of two FBI agents, Ron Williams and Jack
Coler, at Oglala on Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, on June 26,
1975. This young man, aged twenty-seven, who had no violence on his
record, was part of a group of between twelve and twenty young
supporters of the American Indian Movement (AIM) who took part in
defending a local community against harassment by two agents who had
entered private property for disputed reasons, despite strong
warnings not to do so from the tribal police. Peltier escaped to
Canada but was captured and extradited a few months later, largely on
the basis of fabricated depositions from Myrtle Poor Bear, who was
alleged by the prosecution to be his girlfriend and an eyewitness to
the killings. She confessed before his trial that she had never laid
eyes on Mr. Peltier in all her life.

Meanwhile, two other young Indians, Darrell Butler and Robert
Robideau, indicted originally with Peltier on identical evidence and
charges but tried separately in his absence, were entirely acquitted
in federal court in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. ("The jury agreed with the
defense contention that an atmosphere of fear and violence exists on
the reservation," the jury foreman said, "and that the defendants
arguably could have been shooting in self-defense.") Had Peltier not
escaped to Canadaâ€"had he been tried with his two companionsâ€"he
would never have served a single day in prison.

Peltier's trial, arbitrarily removed from Cedar Rapids, was turned
over to Judge Paul Benson, a Nixon appointee and former state
attorney general in Fargo, North Dakota. Meanwhile, some peculiar new
evidence had been produced by the FBI and assistant US attorney Lynn
Crooks. This included strange testimonies that directly contradicted
some of the prosecution's own evidence in the Cedar Rapids trial and
also a last-minute ballistics test that seemed to tie the defendant
to the murder weapon. Most of this evidence would later be shown to
be false, but the crippling restrictions on defense testimony imposed
by Judge Benson in the 1977 trial (for example, he refused defense
attempts to bring prosecution witness Poor Bear to the witness stand
after the prosecution had sensibly declined to do so) and an
inflammatory summation by prosecutor Crooks would win the day for the
United States. Duly convicted on two counts of first-degree murder,
the defendant was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in federal prison.

We know of no Native Americans who take pride or satisfaction in the
tragic violence at Oglala that June day; the Pine Ridge Lakota Sioux
and thousands of other Indian people who have supported Peltier so
loyally and strongly at trials and hearings over two decades would
not have done so if they thought him guilty of the cold-blooded
killings charged by the prosecution. Mr. Peltier has repeatedly
expressed regret about the needless loss of those young men as well
as concern for all their families. "I pray for those agents'
families," he has said, "just as I pray for the families of all the
Indian people who died brutally on our reservations"â€"including the
young AIM Indian Joe Stuntz who also lost his life on that June day,
and whose execution (he was found shot between the eyes) was never
investigated.

This manâ€"rarely mentioned in official documentsâ€"was among the
sixty-four or more traditional people and AIM supporters who met
violent ends on Pine Ridge Reservation in the three dark years that
led up to the shoot-out, mostly at the hands of FBI-supported
vigilante Indians who opposed the AIM. Though the federal government
has jurisdiction over capital crimes committed on the reservations,
none of these Native American deaths was seriously investigated; nor
were any of the malefactors arrested and indictedâ€"all too clearly,
as their people say, because "Indians don't count."

That the victims' colleagues were outraged by the deaths of Mr. Coler
and Mr. Williams is understandableâ€"the two young agents were
executed at point-blank range after being incapacitated during the
shoot-outâ€"and no one denied that swift justice must be done.
Unfortunately, the vast "ResMurs" investigation that, from the start,
terrorized the reservations, and also the ensuing prosecution by the
US Attorney's Office, seemed less concerned with justice than with
vengeance. During Peltier's hearings on appeal, his judges on the
Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals (St. Louis) repeatedly criticized the
FBI and the prosecution for abuse of the judicial process.

In 1982, these magistrates, still troubled by the coerced Poor Bear
fabrications and the rickety ballistics evidence, listened to oral
arguments for a new trial, then ordered an evidentiary hearing (in
Bismarck, North Dakota, October 1984) which clearly established that
the ballistics evidence had indeed been manipulated to establish
Peltier as the lone killer: a key document from the FBI lab,
unlawfully withheld from the defense, demonstrated unequivocally that
the weapon allegedly used by Peltier during the shoot-out could not
be linked to a bullet casing found near the bodies which Crooks had
called "perhaps the most important piece of evidence in this case."

Judge Benson, unbudging in his view that justice had been done in the
case of United States v. Leonard Peltier, refused to order a new
trial, and once again (in 1984) his ruling was appealed before the
circuit court. By now, the uneasy prosecution was referring to
Peltier not as the lone killer but as an aider and abettor, and Judge
Gerald Heaney reminded Crooks that in his summation at the Fargo
trial he had pointed at Peltier as "the man who came down and killed
those agents in cold blood." Pressed on this point by Judge Donald
Ross, Crooks blurted in frustration, "But we can't prove who shot
those agents!" At last the truth was out.

In its decision in 1985, the appeals court concluded that the
prosecution had "withheld evidence from the defense favorable to
Peltier [which] cast a strong doubt on the government's case" and
acknowledged the possibility that had this evidence been brought
forth, the jury might have voted for acquittal. Even so,
astonishingly, the high court held that these circumstances fell
short of the judicial standard required in ordering a new trial.

Judge Heaney, who wrote this finding, remained so troubled by the
fabrications and manipulated evidence that in a television interview
in New York in 1989, after his retirement, he would call it "the
toughest decision I ever had to make in twenty-two years on the
bench." On the same program, Crooks loudly refused to repudiate US
government use of fabricated evidence: "I don't agree that we did
anything wrong but…it don't bother my conscience one whit if we did!"

This amazing statement from a Justice Department officer outraged
Senator Daniel Inouye. "I was a US Attorney once," he fumed one day
in his office in the Capitol, "and that man is a disgrace to the
profession!" In the National Law Journal (June 26, 1990), Judge
Heaney would observe that the FBI was "equally responsible" for the
deaths of its agents; on April 18, 1991, in a letter to Senator
Inouye which also noted that Peltier had already endured fourteen
years in prison, the judge urged commutation of his sentence as a way
of beginning a "healing process" in the long bitter relationship
between the US government and its native peoples.

Those fourteen years cited by Judge Heaney have extended
remorselessly to twenty-three, as the prisoner ages and grows ill,[1]
and still the Department of Justice and the White House fail to act
on a clemency petition filed seven years ago, in November 1993, by
Ramsey Clark, although Peltier's cause is strongly supported not only
by his own people but by the great majority of American citizens who
have informed themselves about his caseâ€"almost everyone, in fact,
except Prosecutor Crooks and the FBI. Nearly a quarter-century after
locking him away, these avengers who admit they never proved who
killed those agents continue to pit the United States against Leonard
Peltier, still brandishing the same old allegationsâ€"that Peltier
had a violent record, for example, including previous assaults on
other law officers; that he has no support from his own people; that
his guilt for the murders has been firmly established; that "he
openly states he feels no guilt or remorse or even regret for the
murders."[2] These long-disproven slanders are being spread in a
frantic effort to deny the one man they put in prison the fair
hearing that might win him parole or clemency before he dies. The FBI
and its Agents Association are currently spending many thousands of
tax dollars lobbying congressmen, the White House, and the media,
including numerous letters to the editor from Bureau personnel and
large paid attack ads in The Washington Post (which otherwise ignores
the Peltier story):

In an extraordinary step, FBI officials across the nation are
mobilizing to prevent a presidential pardon for Leonard Peltier, the
American Indian activist imprisoned for murder whose claim of
innocence has inspired a two-decade protest movement on his behalf.
FBI officials in Milwaukee say they fear that Peltier…will be freed
by President Clinton on his way out of office.[3] Three months ago,
in March, I had a phone call from a lawyer who has never been
involved in the Peltier case but was aware of my longtime concern. A
friend in the Justice Department had just mentioned to him that the
FBI was intensifying its anti-Peltier vendetta within the department,
with Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis as the point
man. In recent days, this friend informed him, Mr. Margolis had gone
to the Attorney General's office to reiterate the Bureau's case, and
he was followed there by Director Louis Freeh, who had taken the
trouble to bring with him the lurid photos of the agents' bodies at Oglala.

Could it be that these men sense that colleagues at Justice may be
growing embarrassed, questioning the ethics as well as the
vindictiveness of their campaign? What are they so afraid of, unless
it is the truth? Could that truth be hidden in the six thousand pages
of evidence pertaining to the ResMurs investigation that the Bureau
still refuses to release under the Freedom of Information Act, citing
"national defense" considerationsâ€"this in reference to a tragic
episode on a dusty reservation farm a quarter of a century ago in
South Dakota? Is it national security which is threatened here or the
protections of our Constitution, not to speak of the nation's
reputation for democracy and justice, which is stained more deeply
with each passing year that this man's life is wasted in prison?

On June 12 of this year, Mr. Peltier came up for parole, as he has
regularly since 1993. Not surprisingly, his release was fought on a
new Internet site that calls itself NPLP (No Parole for Leonard
Peltier) and parrots the same old allegations, but the efforts of
this outfit were quite unnecessary. Even before entering the hearing
room at Leavenworth, Mr. Peltier reports, he was told by a guard,
"Man, they ain't gonna give it to you." He knew that, of course; in
December 1995, when the parole officer had recommended a favorable
decision, that recommendation was filed away for months and months by
the US Parole Commission in Washington and then denied.

Mr. Peltier had long since met all reasonable criteria for a
favorable decision by the parole board; indeed, by the board's own
rules and guidelines, he was perhaps more qualified than any other
prisoner at Leavenworth. Yet, in an echo of the FBI's Catch-22
propaganda, the board regularly demands that the prisoner express
remorse for his guilty role in the death of the two agents which he
has denied for twenty-three years and which even his prosecutor
admits was never proven. (As Jennifer Harbury points out, to withhold
parole because the prisoner won't admit to a crime that he denies
committing is another unlawful violation of due process.)

This time, the Leavenworth parole officer, having heard out the
prisoner's attorneys, turned them down flat, mainly on the grounds
that Peltier's version of events did not correspond with the FBI
version for which he was convicted; he scarcely glanced at the five
boxes of letters and endorsements from around the world, or even the
medical evaluations. The final decision must of course be made by the
US Parole Commission (which could spare the administration and the
Justice Department a hot potato in an election year by the simple
expedient of granting justice).

Why is the US government still prosecuting this defendant a
quarter-century after it imprisoned him? And why is the media so
incurious about the reasons? As American writers, we urge the
Commission and the administration and the Justice Department to
consider Mr. Peltier's petitions with a fair and open mind, in the
spirit of healing that Judge Heaney recommended a decade ago in
urging commutation in this case.

Peter Matthiessen
E.L. Doctorow
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
William and Rose Styron

-------

Leonard Peltier and the Indigenous People:
Our Lives Have Meaning

http://www.blackcommentator.com/334/334_ror_peltier_indigenous_lives_meaning_printer_friendly.html

By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD
July 23, 2009

I know this. My life has a meaning. I refuse to believe that this
existence, our time on Mother Earth, is meaningless. I believe that
the Creator, Wakan Tanka, has shaped each of our lives for a reason.
I don't know what that reason is. Maybe I'll never know. But you
don't have to know the meaning of life to know that life has a meaning.
-Leonard Peltier
Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance

Spiritual warrior of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota Nation, Leonard
Peltier is 65 years old. In 1977, the U.S. government believed the
warrior, then 30 years old, too dangerous. Now Elder Peltier, a
political prisoner, currently incarcerated at the U.S. Penitentiary
in Lewisburg, PA, is scheduled to come before the U.S. Parole
Commission on July 28, 2009 after spending 33 years because the
government fears dissidence more than it respects justice.

Another day ends. That's good. But now another night is beginning.
And that's bad. The nights are worse. The days just happen to you.
The night you've got to imagine, to conjure up, all by yourself.
They're the stuff of your own nightmares. The lights go down but they
never quite go out in here. Shadows lurk everywhere. Shadows within
shadows. I'm one of those shadows myself. I, Leonard Peltier. Also
known in my native country of Great Turtle Island as Gwarth-ee-lass -
'He Leads the People.' Also known among my Sioux brethren as
Tate-Wikikuma - 'Wind Chases the Sun.' Also known as U.S. Prisoner #89637-132.

For three years, since the end of the 71-day takeover of Wounded
Knee, the site of the 1890 massacre of women and children, the
residents of Jumping Bull had been under attack. Ramsey Clark writes,
a "rogue paramilitary group" - "the GOONs - Guardians of the Oglala
Nation" who were provided "weapons, training and motivation to create
a wave of violence…against traditional Indian people and their
supporters, including the American Indian Movement," killed over 60
residents of Jumping Bull ("Preface," Prison Writings). The GOONs,
led by Dick Wilson, mix-blood tribal leader and the leader of the
anti-traditional "progressive" movement, presided over what is known
as the "Reign of Terror." Wilson openly bragged to the media about
his GOON squad and the particular brand of "law and order" on the
reservation that didn't seem to alarm the U.S. government. Terrorist
tactics against residents, particularly elderly people supporting the
right to maintain traditional beliefs and values were beaten or
murdered, was supported by the FBI.

The people of Oglala had had enough. As they had done in 1973, when
they requested the help of the American Indian Movement (AIM) at
Wounded Knee, the elders called on them once again and Leonard
Peltier along with 16 other AIM members came to protect the people at
Oglala. In a 1973 FBI document, Jon Lurie writes, "the government was
concerned that AIM would shift their emphasis from advocacy of Native
pride to the 'prevention of resources exploitation'" ("The Wiping of
the Tears"). Wilson had given away "one-third of the uranium-rich
reservation" to the federal government (Lurie).

Thirty-four years ago, on June 26, 1975, two FBI Special Agents,
driving unmarked cars and claiming to be in pursuit of a red pickup
truck, owned by a Jimmy Eagle, came onto the Oglala Reservation in
South Dakota.

Peltier remembers resting near the homes where the women were doing
the laundry. He heard shooting and dismissed it at first, until he
heard screaming. "My job was to protect the terrified people," wrote
Peltier (Prison Writings). He led the people away from the "dead
zone" to a gulley where they prayed.

AIM activist Joe Stuntz and the two Special Agents Jack R. Coler and
Ronald A. Williams were dead. Stuntz was shot in the head. To this
today, neither Stuntz's murder nor the murders of 60 Oglala people
were ever investigated. A few days later, the body of another AIM
activist Anna Mae Aquash was found murdered.

Bob Robideau and Dino Butler were captured at charged with double
murder. Both men contended that they were defending the people who
had for so long experienced an atmosphere of terror at Pine Ridge.
The jury found them not guilty. The FBI cried foul! They set about to
stack the deck on Peltier who was fighting extradition from Canada to
the U.S. The FBI, instead of pursuing justice, pursued revenge, and a
means to characterize AIM as a homegrown terrorist threat, as they
had with the Black Panthers. The FBI sought and found a favorable
environment. Contrary to U.S. Congress, in particular Senators
Lindsey Graham and Jeff Sessions belief that judges don't advocate a
certain ideology, the FBI located a judge favorable to permitting a
kangaroo court, where false evidence was allowed to be presented
against Indigenous People. It also procured a favorable jury - all
white. In 1977, the government selected Fargo, North Dakota to hold the trial.

"Peltier's conviction is one of the worst examples of government
manipulation of the justice process in American history," according
to Dan Skye, June 2009, "Leonard Peltier Parole Hearing July 27,
2009." "In 1977… the judge disallowed testimony describing the state
of open warfare that existed on Pine Ridge, nor was Peltier allowed
to claim self-defense. Later, an appeals judge called the conduct of
the FBI 'a clear violation of the investigative process.'" By the
time the trial ended, it was Peltier's red and white van (not a red
pick up truck now) that was just ahead of the two unmarked car. It
was Peltier's rifle that shot the officers "point blank." Peltier is
sentenced for crimes in which "false affidavits" were used as
evidence and witnesses were "intimidated" and "coerced" into
testifying against Peltier (Skye).

The Spiritual warrior of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota Nation,
entered the hellhole that can only be conjured by hate and fear for
people who struggle for freedom.

During the 1960s, Peltier worked as a farmer and then an auto shop
worker in Seattle," writes Carolina Saldana, "Leonard Peltier:
Silence Screams," Born Black Magazine. "At that time he got his first
taste of community organizing" and joined, in the early 1970s AIM,
participating in the Trail of Broken Treaties, a march from Alcatraz
to Washington D.C. He also participated in the occupation of the BIA
[Bureau of Indian Affairs] in Washington (Saldana). As a result,
Peltier became a "target of the FBI program [COINTELPRO] to
'neutralize' AIM leaders and was set up and jailed at the end of the year."

My own personal story can't be told, even in this abbreviated
version, without going back long before my own birth on September 12,
1944, back to 1890 and to 1876 and to 1851 and, yes, all the way back
through all the other calamitous dates in the relations between the
red men and white, back to that darkest day of all in human history:
October 12, 1492, when our Great Sorrow began (Peltier).

Some people know the facts surrounding October 12, 1492, but not many
have sat long enough to feel the impact of the Great Sorrow against
humanity. Fewer still truly recognize the willful destruction of
people, cultures, and lands; the mandate forcing survivors to
relocate in mass; the government neglect and the lies, deceit, and
outright heavy-handed enforcement of legalities backed by repressive
presence of police and military operatives - long before the
ghettoizing Black urban communities, long before the 1948 Nakba in Palestine.

A First people, the Indigenous People of the Americas, abused by
European forces and then by the might of the United States is
expected to be forgetful and further assist in their own annihilation
by assimilating to the rulers of capitalism and to foreign beliefs and values.

Give up the fight or at least remain silent!

Silence, they say, is the voice of complicity.
But silence is impossible.
Silence screams.
Silence is a message,
just as doing nothing is an act

Let who you are ring out and resonate
in every word and every deed.
Yes, become who you are.
There's no sidestepping your own being
or your own responsibility.

What you do is who you are.
You are your own comeuppance.
You become your own message.

You are the message.

-Peltier, "The Message"

The Great Sorrow, while victimizing the Indigenous People of
Americas, has not diminished the peoples' knowledge of their history
and relationship with the Mother Earth.

I had the honor to speak by phone with Tiokasin Ghosthorse, master
musician and flutist, storyteller, poet, university lecturer,
scholar, essayist, human rights activist, and host of First Voices
Indigenous Radio (WBAI). "We are not claiming to be victims,"
Ghosthorse said. "We've known we have always been out of the box."

Ghosthorse is a survivor of the official Reign of Terror, 1972-1976.
But the Reign of Terror began long before 1972. During the 1960s,
Ghosthorse explained, the mining for uranium on the Pine Ridge
Reservation included more than mining of the land: it mined the
spirit of the people. "Some people ended up working for the
government on those projects while it was said of the 'traditional'
people that we were 'backward.'"

But traditionalist persisted, as has the Reign of Terror, he said.

"The Reign of Terror began long before the years of 1972-1976. Before
that things were happening," Ghosthorse recalls. The government came
and told the Nation that thousands of Lakota people living near the
Missouri River, where the government was building a dam, had to move.
"The government flooded the land and up rooted people." Whites living
along the river were given sufficient time to evacuate the area, and
they were compensated. This was not the case for the Lakota people.

The Reign of Terror precedes the official beginnings of the
COINTELPRO FBI program. As early as the 1950s, "if you said you
didn't like the system, you were deemed a dissident." And the police
state continues today.

Ghosthorse explains that in 1999, 2000, and 2001, 9 men, educated in
both traditional and at non-Indigenous U.S. institutions, were found
dead, "face down, in Rapid Creek." Why? These young men, Ghosthorse
said, were starting to organize the people, organize a movement. The
government responded to this perceived threat. "No investigation
[occurred] because they [the FBI] claimed they didn't have the
resources." The U.S. government didn't investigate human rights
violations against the Indigenous People. "But we are talking about
our 'natural' rights - not those given by any government."

Currently, at Pine Ridge, "the life span of men is down to 40 years
of age. It used to be 120." Women's life span is 45 years of age.
"Sixty-four percent of our population is 20 years." That means most
of our young people "are without parents and grandparents," Ghosthorse said.

He remembers that in his own childhood, he walked to school, dodging
the GOONs and the FBI. "Everyone walked. But we knew where to walk
and where not to walk." The people devised ways to walk where the
GOONs and FBI agents wouldn't drive their cars. But people were
"maimed for life and wounded" during this period. Many were killed,
"far more than 60 people."

The culture of greed fuels the continuation of the Reign of Terror
against the Indigenous People whose understanding of "freedom"
precedes the imposition of capitalist values.

If we were dealing with truth, the U.S. would owe the Native Indian
well over 125 billion dollars. What matters is not the money, but the
truth that all Americans need to know. We are talking about the U.S.
government's war on Earth that's driven by profit. Our way of
relating to the Earth is anti-profit.

That's what this Reign of Terror is all about. That's what we are
talking about.

But, Ghosthorse added, if we use "the language of the government…we
are not going to get anywhere. We are going to stand until we get it
- our 'freedom.'"

"It's about who we are - not were."

"We have always been poor," Ghosthorse concluded, "but we've been the
riches in spirit. This is what the government does not want Americans
to know. [But] if we forget who we are, this country is lost."

The persecution of elder Leonard Peltier is intended to conceal the
attack against spiritual warriors who attempt to defend the
Indigenous People against the violence of the U.S. government and
those who engage the ruling power against their own people.

The meaning of Peltier's life is linked to the meaning of freedom for
the Indigenous People.

This spirit of Crazy Horse is a spirit of being in total resistance
to the wrongs perpetrated towards your people, community, family and
yourself. It is when we make a conscious choice to try and balance
the wrongs in this society that we are being compelled by this spirit
of resistance to stand in defense of the wronged.

-Leonard Peltier, "Letter Written November 5, 2008," San Francisco
Bayview, January 2009.
--

AIM Casualties on Pine Ridge, 1973-1976

4.17.73-Frank Clearwater-AIM member killed by heavy machine gun round
at Wounded Knee. No investigation.

4.23.73-Between eight and twelve individuals (names unknown) packing
supplies into Wounded Knee were intercepted by Goons [Guardians of
the Oglala Nation] and vigilantes. None were ever heard from again.
Former Rosebud Tribal President Robert Burnette and U.S. Justice
Department Solicitor General Kent Frizzell conducted unsuccessful
search for a mass grave after Wounded Knee siege. No further investigation.

4.27.73-Buddy Lamont-AIM member hit by M16 fire at Wounded Knee, Bled
to death while pinned down by fire. No investigation.

6.19.73-Clarence Cross-AIM supporter shot to death in ambush by
Goons. Although assailants were identified by eyewitnesses, brother
Vernal Cross-wounded in ambush-was briefly charged with crime. No
further investigation.

4.14.73-Priscilla White Plume-AIM supporter killed at Manderson by
Goons. No investigation.

7.30.73-Julius Bad Heart Bull-AIM supporter killed at Oglala AIM
supporter killed at Oglala by "person or persons unknown." No investigation.

9.22.73-Melvin Spider-AIM member killed Porcupine, South Dakota. No
investigation.

9.23.73-Philip Black Elk-AIM supporter killed when his house
exploded. No investigation.

10.5.73-Aloysius Long Soldier-AIM member killed at Kyle, S.D. by
Goons. No investigation.

10.10.73-Phillip Little Crow-AIM supporter beaten to death by Goons
at Pine Ridge. No investigation.

10.17.73-Pedro Bissonette-Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization
(OSCRO) organizer and AIM supporter assassinated by BIA Police/Goons.
Body removed from Pine Ridge jurisdiction prior to autopsy by
government contract coroner. No investigation.

11.20.73-Allison Fast Horse-AIM supporter shot to death near Pine
Ridge by "unknown assailants." No investigation.

1.17.74-Edward Means, Jr.-AIM member found dead in Pine Ridge alley,
beaten. No investigation.

2.27.74-Edward Standing Soldier-AIM member killed near Pine Ridge by
"party r parties unknown." No investigation.

4.19.74-Roxeine Roark-AIM supporter killed at Porcupine by "unknown
assailants." Investigation open, still "pending."

9.7.74-Dennis LeCompte-AIM member killed at Pine Ridge by Goons. No
investigation.

9.11.74-Jackson Washington Cutt-AIM member killed at Parmalee by
"unknown individuals." Investigation still "ongoing."

9.16.74-Robert Reddy-AIM member killed at Kyle by gunshot. No investigation.

11.16.74-Delphine Crow Dog-sister of AIM spiritual leader Leonard
Crow Dog. Beaten by BIA police and left lying in a field. Died from
"exposure." No investigation.

11.20.74-Elaine Wagner-AIM supporter killed at Pine Ridge by "person
or persons unknown." No investigation.

12.25.75-Floyd S. Binais-AIM supporter killed at Pine Ridge by Goons.
No investigation.

12.28.74-Yvette Loraine Lone Hill-AIM supporter killed at Kyle by
"unknown party or parties." No investigation.

1.5.75-Leon L. Swift Bird-AIM member killed at Pine Ridge by Goons.
Investigation still "ongoing."

3.1.75-Martin Montileaux-killed in a Scenic, S.D. bar. AIM leader
Richard Marshall later framed for his murder. Russell Means also
charged and acquitted.

3.20.75-Stacy Cotter-shot to death in an ambush at Manderson. No investigation.

3.21.75-Edith Eagle Hawk and her two children-AIM supporter killed in
an automobile accident after being run off the run by a white
vigilante, Albert Coomes. Coomes was also killed in the accident.
Goon Mark Clifford identified as having also been in the Coomes car,
escaped. Investigation closed without questioning Clifford.

3.27.75-Jeanette Bissonette-AIM supporter killed by sniper at Pine
Ridge. Unsuccessful attempt to link AIM members to murder; no other
investigation.

3.30.75-Richard Eagle-grandson of AIM supporter Gladys Bissonette
killed while playing with loaded gun kept in the house as protection
from Goon attacks.

4.4.75-Hilda R. Good Buffalo-AIM supporter stabbed to death at Pine
Ridge by Goons. No investigation.

4.4.75-Jancita Eagle Deer-AIM member beaten and run over with
automobile. Last seen in the company of provocateur Douglass Durham.
No investigation.

5.20.75-Ben Sitting Up-AIM member killed at Wanblee by "unknown
assailants." No investigation.

6.1.75-Kenneth Little-AIM supporter killed at Pine Ridge by Goons.
Investigation still "pending."

6.15.75-Leah Spotted Elk-AIM supporter at Pine Ridge by Goons. No
investigation.

6.26.75-Joseph Stuntz Killsright-AIM member killed by FBI sniper
during Oglala firefight. No investigation.

7.12.75-James Briggs Yellow-heart attack caused by FBI air assault on
his home. No investigation.

7.25.75-Andrew Paul Stewart-nephew of AIM spiritual leader Leonard
Crow Dog, killed by Goons on Pine Ridge. No investigation.

8.25.75-Randy Hunter-AIM supporter killed at Kyle by "party or
parties unknown." Investigation still "ongoing."

9.9.75-Howard Blue Bird-AIM supporter killed at Pine Ridge by Goons.
No investigation.

9.10.75-Jim Little-AIM stomped to death by Goons in Oglala. No investigation.

10.26.75-Olivia Binais-AIM supporter killed in Porcupine by "person
or persons unknown." Investigation still "open."

10.26.75-Janice Black Bear-AIM supporter killed at Manderson by
Goons. No investigation.

10.27.75-Michelle Tobacco-AIM supporter killed at Pine Ridge by
"unknown persons." No investigation.

12.6.75-Carl Plenty Arrows, Sr.-AIM supporter killed at Pine Ridge by
"unknown persons." No investigation.

12.6.75-Frank LaPointe-AIM supporter killed at Pine Ridge by Goons.
No investigation.

2.76-Anna Mae Pictou Aquash-AIM organizer assassinated on Pine Ridge.
FBI involved in attempt to conceal cause of death. Ongoing attempt to
establish "AIM involvement" in murder. Key FBI personnel never
deposed. Coroner never deposed. [to testify or bear witness,
especially on oath in court].

1.5.76-Lydia Cut Grass-AIM member killed at Wounded Knee by Goons. No
investigation.

1.30.76-Byron DeSersa-OSCRO organizer and AIM supporter assassinated
by Goons in Wanblee. Arrests by local authorities resulted in two
Goons-Dale Janis and Charlie Winters-serving two years of five year
sentences for "manslaughter." Charges dropped against two Goon
leaders, Manny Wilson and Chuck Richards, on the basis of
"self-defense" despite DeSersa having been unarmed when shot to death.

2.6.76-Lena R. Slow Bear-AIM supporter killed at Oglala by Goons. No
investigation.

3.1.76-Hobart Horse-AIM member beaten, shot, and repeatedly run over
with automobile at Sharp's Corners. No investigation.

3.26.76-Cleveland Reddest-AIM member killed at Kyle by "person or
persons unknown." No investigation.

4.28.76-Betty Jo Dubray-AIM supporter beaten to death at Martin, S.D.
No investigation.

5.6.76-Marvin Two Two-Aim supporter shot to death at Pine Ridge. No
investigation.

5.9.76-Juia Pretty Hips-AIM supporter killed at Pine Ridge by unknown
assailants." No investigation.

5.24.76-Sam Afraid of Bear-AIM supporter shot to death at Pine Ridge.
Investigation "ongoing."

6.4.76-Kevin Hill-AIM supporter killed at Oglala by "party or parties
unknown." Investigation "still open."

7.3.76-Betty Means-AIM member killed at Pine Ridge by Goons. No investigation.

7.31.76-Sandra Wounded Foot-AIM supporter killed at Sharp's Corners
by "unknown assailants." No investigation.

From "AIM, Pine Ridge and the FBI" http://www.dickshovel.com/Aim.Pine.html

Leonard Peltier Defense/Offense Committee: www.whoisleonardpeltier.info

-------

Leonard Peltier: brutal cop killer, political prisoner, or symbol of
a defeated people?

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/rupert-cornwell/rupert-cornwell-leonard-peltier-brutal-cop-killer-political-prisoner-or-symbol-of-a-defeated-people-1761495.html

Out of America: A native American who has spent 32 years in jail for
a crime he says he did not commit will get a parole hearing next week

by Rupert Cornwell
26 July 2009

It was back in Moscow more than 20 years ago, when I was covering the
Soviet Union for this newspaper, that I first heard the name of
Leonard Peltier. President Reagan would come to town and lecture the
Kremlin ­ entirely justifiably ­ on its abysmal human rights record.
And each time the Russians would accuse the US of hypocrisy and ask,
what about Leonard Peltier, America's own human rights prisoner?

Just recently, I heard his name again. Peltier, a Lakota Indian, has
now served more than 32 years of two consecutive life sentences
imposed for the murder of two FBI agents during a shoot-out at the
Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota in 1975. He denies
carrying out the killings, claiming he is simply another victim of
the systematic persecution and crushing of the native American
peoples carried out by the United States. Next Tuesday, he will have
his first full parole hearing since 1993, and once more his
supporters are mobilising.

Over the years, these have been many and famous: among them,
naturally, the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as
Pope John Paul II, Nelson Mandela, the actor Robert Redford, the
European Parliament, various national legislatures in Europe, a
former UN commissioner for human rights and Amnesty International.
Amnesty does not classify Peltier as a prisoner of conscience, but it
too is urging that parole be granted, because of doubts about whether
his trial was fair and whether political factors played a part in his
conviction.

The FBI will have none of this. For US law enforcement, Peltier was,
and remains, nothing more than a particularly brutal murderer, who
dispatched two of its own men execution-style as they lay wounded and
helpless. But whatever precisely happened that summer day long ago,
one thing is undeniable. Leonard Peltier is a player in the
continuing tragedy of native Americans.

He was an activist in the American Indian Movement (AIM), founded to
mark the 100th anniversary of the 1868 Fort Laramie treaty that
supposedly guaranteed Lakota ownership of the sacred Black Hills in
South Dakota, which were then seized by the US government after the
Black Hills gold rush. In its quest to reassert the rights of native
Americans, AIM was also inspired by the Black Power movement of
African Americans that was gaining momentum at that time; and the
Pine Ridge reservation, where the infamous Wounded Knee massacre of
1890 took place, became a focal point of its campaign.

In 1973, the movement staged a two-month takeover of the Wounded Knee
site, ended only by the dispatch of police and US army units to
regain control. There followed two bloody years during which AIM was
hounded by the US government and so-called "progressive" Indians,
readier to assimilate into white American society, and Pine Ridge
boasted the highest murder rate in country.

The climax came on the hot summer afternoon of 26 June 1975, when two
FBI agents entered the reservation to serve an arrest warrant on a
young native American named Jimmy Eagle, suspected of kidnap. Peltier
and two AIM comrades, Robert Robideau and Dino Butler, believed,
however, that the agents were seeking them. A gunfight ensued in
which the FBI men were pinned down, wounded, and finally killed with
shots to the head at point-blank range.

Immediately the authorities launched a massive murder hunt for Eagle
and the other three. Eventually, murder charges against Eagle were
dropped, while Robideau and Butler were caught and tried by a federal
court, only to be acquitted on the grounds that they acted in
self-defence. Peltier, who had fled to Canada, would face the wrath
and vengeance of the FBI on his own.

A year later he was seized by the Mounties after a tip-off and
extradited to the US, where in 1977 he was tried and convicted. But
to this day, controversy persists. In its zeal to nail Peltier, the
FBI has been accused of intimidating witnesses to secure evidence,
first for the extradition, and then the conviction. Ballistics
evidence that might have exculpated him was allegedly withheld. There
is no doubt Peltier was among those who fired some of the shots at
the agents, but it has never been established who actually killed them.

The trial itself, Peltier's supporters insist, was tilted unfairly
against the defendant. The jury of 10 men and two women was all
white, while the judge barred all testimony on the conditions at Pine
Ridge before the fatal day ­ thus reducing chances of the
self-defence acquittal secured by Robideau and Butler.

After six hours of deliberation, the jury found Peltier guilty on
both counts. But in a final statement before sentencing he declared:
"I'm not the guilty one here. White racist America is the criminal,
for the destruction of our lands and our people." And although
successive appeals courts upheld the verdict, that was the version of
the Peltier story seized upon by the Soviets in the 1980s, as some
small counterweight to the horror stories of KGB persecution, forced
exile, psychiatric hospitals and the rest.

The Soviet Union is long gone, but the Peltier case never quite
disappeared. Over the years, parole applications and demands for a
retrial have been unfailingly dismissed. But the FBI was sufficiently
alarmed at rumours that Bill Clinton was considering a grant of
executive clemency when he left office in January 2001 that 500
agents and their families staged a demonstration in protest outside
the White House.

This time, too, you'd have to bet against parole ­ despite the three
long decades Peltier has been behind bars, despite a recent beating
when he was transferred to a new prison, despite his poor health.
Never has he expressed any remorse for the deaths of the two agents,
in which at the very least he played a role. Instead, in all
likelihood, he will remain a prisoner of a country he hates, a futile
but poignant symbol of a defeated, broken people.

--------

OBIT

Grapevine High graduate worked some of FBI's biggest cases

http://www.star-telegram.com/state_news/story/1496756.html

By GORDON DICKSON
gdickson@star-telegram.com
Jul. 20, 2009

Jim Wilkins' 34-year FBI career included an important but
little-known footnote in America criminal history.

Wilkins was the agent who recaptured American Indian activist Leonard
Peltier, who was serving two life sentences for the 1975 murder of
two FBI agents at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota
when he escaped from a California prison in 1979.

Peltier fled to the Santa Maria hills. But his run from the law ended
after four days, when Wilkins spotted Peltier's white tennis shoes in
the brush and took him into custody.

Wilkins, a 1966 Grapevine High School graduate, worked for the FBI
throughout California and in his native Texas. After his retirement
in 2000, he became Marshall police chief, where he retired, again, in 2008.

"He had a total of 41 years in law enforcement. He loved the job,"
his brother Dale Wilkins said Monday in an interview. "He loved being
a hands on, in-charge type of person."

Jim Wilkins, 61, died Friday after collapsing at his farm near
Brownwood. He and Dale Wilkins, also a career lawman and retired
Grapevine police chief, had been working the farm together.

Little-known player

James "Jim" Wilkins was born Oct. 17, 1947, in Denton. He earned a
bachelor's degree in history in 1970 from the University of Texas at Arlington.

He began working with the FBI in 1967 as a clerk in Dallas and became
an agent in 1971, FBI spokesman Mark White said.

He worked in San Francisco, Salinas, Los Angeles and Santa Maria,
Calif., before returning to Texas in 1995. He was the agency's top
man in Tyler.

Wilkins' role in recapturing Peltier was recounted in American Indian
Mafia: An FBI Agent's True Story About Wounded Knee, Leonard Peltier,
and the American Indian Movement (AIM).

The book by Joseph H. and John M. Trimbach explores misconceptions
about what happened between American Indians and the FBI during 1970s
confrontations at Pine Ridge and Wounded Knee.

"Jim was instrumental in helping us correct the historical record,"
John Trimbach said Monday in an interview. He added that although
Wilkins was rarely mentioned by name, his recapture of Peltier is
often at the center of conspiracy theories involving the FBI secretly
wishing that Peltier would escape from prison so that he could be killed.

Mr. Wilkins was interviewed for the book while still Marshall police
chief, Trimbach said.

"Jim told us we were the first people who came along and asked what
really happened," Trimbach said.

Law enforcement life

Throughout his career, Mr. Wilkins investigated bank robberies,
kidnappings, narcotics and public corruption. Two of his cases were
featured on true-crime TV shows, his brother said.

He was especially proud that his daughter Tifani Brinkman is a police
detective in Bossier City, La., and his son Justin is a firefighter
in Kern County, Calif.

Mr. Wilkins is also survived by his wife, Linda Wilkins, of
Brownwood; son Daren Epps of Santa Maria; daughter Liese Marking of
Santa Maria; brother Frank Wilkins of Plano; and eight grandchildren.
---

Memorials Memorial is 2 p.m. today at First Baptist Church, 301 E.
Texas St. in Grapevine.

Memorials in Mr. Wilkins' name may be made to the National Law
Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, 400 Seventh St. NW, Suite 300,
Washington, D.C. 20004 or by visiting www.nleomf.com.
--

GORDON DICKSON, 817-390-7796

.